


Power leak

by disgustiphage, nightbloomingcereus



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anal Sex, Angel and Demon True Forms (Good Omens), Car Sex, Do It With Style Good Omens Reverse Bang, Established Relationship, Idiots in Love, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Metaphysical Sex, Miracles, Post-Canon, Sex in the Bentley (Good Omens), ethereal and occult power, highly dubious Antichrist physics, that's not quite fair sometimes Newt can have it too, there is one brain cell in this story and Anathema has it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:14:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29113614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disgustiphage/pseuds/disgustiphage, https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightbloomingcereus/pseuds/nightbloomingcereus
Summary: The thing was, it turned out that Crowley had been right after all.  When an angel and a demon came together as one, it was explosive.And it was glorious.And, like all explosions, it was accompanied by the release of a certain amount of energy into the world.In which Aziraphale and Crowley find themselves inconveniently trapped inside the Bentley in their true forms, after getting a bit carried away…
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 46
Collections: Do It With Style Good Omens Reverse Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to Disgustiphage for creating the incredible art that inspired this fic! (Seriously, I saw the draft of it, and an entire fic outline, start to finish, just fell into my head.) It's been fantastic working with him.
> 
> Thanks also to the folks over at DIWS, who have made this a fantastic event. :)

In retrospect, they really should have known better.

There were just so many little things that were subtly _off_. None of them bad, exactly, but just different enough to make it obvious, if one were being observant, that some fundamental rule about the way things were supposed to work about the world had changed.

When they tumbled into the front passenger seat of the Bentley, breathless and giddy, in their shirtsleeves, neckwear already undone and collars pulled half askew, hands and mouths all over one another, the air felt charged with electricity, so much so that Aziraphale's hair was a veritable halo of silver static. Even Crowley's sleek coiffure, held in place with enough miracles and mousse to withstand gale-force winds and electrical storms and the constant threat of London drizzle, was beginning to look rather hot and bothered. When Crowley snapped his fingers to darken the windows like he'd done a hundred times before[1], the miracle did not sink in the way it usually did, but rather sat like a thin, iridescent, oily film, swirling and floating uneasily on top of the glass. When Aziraphale subtly expanded the amount of space in the front compartment of the vehicle[2] with a miracle of his own to widen and deepen the passenger seat and increase the ceiling clearance just a smidge so that Crowley could sit astride him and not bump his head against the ceiling with every thrust, the whole thing, seat and ceiling and maybe even the air itself, developed a slight, buzzy vibration that did not abate.

In their defense, Aziraphale's curls always got a bit flyaway and staticky when his woolen sweater vest was pulled off over his head by an impatient demon who just wanted it out of the way _now_. And perhaps he himself had tugged a bit on Crowley's hair while they were kissing, and then tugged a little harder when it became evident that Crowley _liked_ it rather a lot. The Bentley's windows _did_ become impenetrable, even if a curious passer-by with no sense of self-preservation trying to peer in would see, instead of plain dark-tinted glass, something that looked polarized and swirly in a way that was slightly nauseating. Even the vibrating seat was, if not entirely expected, rather exciting, and Aziraphale simply thought that he'd gotten carried away with the miracle, which was an understandable and not entirely baseless assumption. 

And, well, they were an angel and a demon. There were bound to be sparks when holy and occult energies bumped up against each other in particular, passionate ways. There had always been sparks, right from the very beginning, although there were rather more of them these days, now that they'd allowed themselves to give in to their impulses at long last.

The very first time they'd made love, in Aziraphale's bookshop the day after the world had failed to end, Crowley had made a sound that was half hiss and half gasp and all wonder when the ring of pale, gleaming gold around Aziraphale's irises had radiated outward to completely fill the whites of his eyes, so that they looked like a pool of liquid gold set with faceted jewels of an intense, oceanic blue-green. It was both alike and different from how his own eyes shifted in moments of extreme emotion, the irises expanding, the gold crowding the white sclera aside. A moment later he'd seen all of the countless number of Aziraphale's eyes in the astral plane, and he'd understood that this was how they _truly_ looked, each one brighter and more beautiful than the last. He was aware that Aziraphale was seeing _his_ true self as well, and they'd both come untouched right then and there, physically and metaphysically, just from the sheer, immense wonder of it all.

Back in the mostly earthbound world of the bookshop, they'd been surprised by the sudden manifestation of Aziraphale's wings, several pairs of them, in all their glory. They were too many, too large, too glorious, to be set in any logical sort of way upon the bones and boundaries of a human corporation, and yet they looked perfectly, wondrously, ineffably _right_ , there in the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the oculus dome. Every feather had been limned in delicate, sparkling, silver-gold; it was the exact color of his hair, with the same glowing quality. Crowley's wings, a single pair to Aziraphale's three, had appeared too, along with sleek stretches of scales all down the length of his body. Bright motes of scintillating light hung in the air above them, catching the sunlight, little exuberant bits of miracle and power given physical form. The barrier between the physical and the metaphysical worlds was very thin at times, and in that moment it had all but vanished. It was only temporary though, lasting the length of time that it took to orgasm and then come down from it, and then the wings and the scales and the sparks and everything else had faded back into the ether.

The thing was, it turned out that Crowley had been right after all. When an angel and a demon came together as one, it was explosive.

And it was _glorious_. 

And, like all explosions, it was accompanied by the release of a certain amount of energy into the world.

The term _afterglow_ was, for angels and demons whose true forms had been spun out of light and energy, quite literally true. There was always an overflow of metaphysical power that leaked out into the physical world. It was the same sort of energy that powered miracles, that Aziraphale used to bless and Crowley used to tempt. Had Anathema been present[3], she would have perceived it as a brief and sudden increase in the size and intensity of their auras, the pair of them pulsing strobe-bright and perfectly synchronized. Like the wings and scales and other physical evidence of their true forms, this burst of energy vanished quickly, dissipating into the atmosphere of the Earth, although not without subtle effects. On most evenings, some mornings, and even a few afternoons, of the last six months, someone walking past the bookshop at the right time might suddenly feel their spirits lifted by an inexplicable sense of harmonious well-being. On the other hand, they might find themselves rather put out a moment later when they discovered that their shoelaces were tied together, particularly when they hadn't been wearing shoes with laces to begin with.

(But maybe, just maybe, they'd trip over those shoelaces and fall into the arms of someone they'd been waiting for their whole lifetime. Life was funny like that.)

The world was big. It could handle a little extra metaphysical power, a few extra miracles. It even, perhaps, welcomed it.

They'd made love, they'd entangled, they'd _fucked_ , on practically every single horizontal surface, and a few vertical, in the bookshop, in Crowley's flat, in each and every one of the fancy suites at the Ritz, over the last few months, but they'd never once done it in the Bentley. It was inevitable, really, that the idea would occur to one or the other of them sooner rather than later, that they'd eventually find themselves just drunk enough on wine and on each other (it hadn't gotten old yet, not after being together for months, and it probably never would) that having sex in the Bentley seemed like an incredible idea. Crowley had suggested it as a lark, but once he'd brought it up, neither of them could stop thinking about it. The allure of the slightly forbidden[4] and the possibility of getting caught only made the notion that much more irresistible.

Everyone loses their mind, just a little, when they're in love.

Inside the Bentley, there were more miracles, heated and impatient, performed in the heat of the moment. One, to banish most of the remainder of their clothing, was arguably a necessity: removing Crowley's trousers the human way was a complicated, challenging endeavor at the best of times[5], and nearly impossible in the cramped confines of the Bentley. And besides, neither was willing to detach himself from the other for long or far enough to even be able to make the attempt to get them off the old-fashioned way, so a miracle it had to be. Aziraphale had intended for the vanished clothing to find itself neatly folded back in the closet in the flat above the bookshop, ready to be snapped back at a moment's notice. This did not occur, although they were both too preoccupied with other, more pressing things to notice. Instead their assorted trousers, shirts, shoes[6], accessories, and underthings found themselves rather surprisingly rematerializing a mere three feet away, where they smacked forcefully against the inside of the back windshield of the Bentley before landing in an unceremonious, haphazard heap on the backseat.

There was a miracle to make everything conveniently slick and lubricated, and yet another to render Crowley stretched and ready and open. There was a lot to be said for preparing each other the human way, with the exquisitely slow drag of one finger after another, drawn out over an extended, delicious span of time, for slowly and lovingly teasing one's lover open, pliant and aching with need and desire, for finding each one of his most secret, sensitive spots. They'd spent whole evenings doing just that, but right now, in the urgency and heat of the moment, neither of them had the patience for such long, drawn-out foreplay.

Crowley sank down slowly, slowly, onto Aziraphale's cock, savoring the stretch and the slide, legs bracketed around the angel's waist. There wasn't room for him to lock his ankles together behind Aziraphale's back the way he usually would, so he braced himself with his knees and feet digging into the leather of the seat back. It was a tight squeeze, and very likely only feasible for someone who was partially a snake and had the flexible spine to prove it. His knees were jackknifed up against the back of the seat in a way that couldn't possibly be comfortable even for a serpent, but he wasn't complaining. It was part of the novelty, part of the excitement, of the thing. And it had its own unexpected benefits too: the cramped position and narrow angle meant that once Aziraphale had bottomed out, filling him to the brim, he was pressed up against Aziraphale as close as could be, the base of his pelvis cradled in the creases between Aziraphale's hips and thighs, his cock trapped tight between their bodies. Every motion - every roll of his hips, every upward thrust of Aziraphale's - caused the leaking tip to rub against the soft, ample flesh of Aziraphale's stomach with a tantalizing friction.

_In the vast, infinite spaces of the metaphysical plane, materializing out of an enormous wheel of blinding white light spinning at dizzying speed, eyes begin to coalesce. Eyelashes flutter. They blink open, one by one at first and then ten, a hundred, a thousand all at once. All told, their number is countless, each one a startling, electric, impossible deepwater blue-green limned in gold. Each one a roiling ocean and a pulsing sun._

_Simultaneously, individual, jewel-like scales begin to appear, suspended in the dark ether. Some are tiny and jewel-like, others as vast as continents, as galaxies. They are reflective and refractive at the same time, smoked-glass mirrors and crystal prisms tilting and twisting at impossible, mind-bending angles. The angel's light strikes each one with a musical ping, a different note for every one, and then scatters into a thousand tiny facets of every color ever described, and a million more beside._

_There is an eye for every one of the scales, to glory in every one of the colors. They are perfectly matched, one for every one._

Crowley had a number of tiny, dark spots sprinkled across the skin of his back, splattered across the long, lean lines of his thighs, demarcating the swell of his buttocks. Humans might perceive them as freckles, or birthmarks; the second was closer to the truth, although not in a truly literal sense. Angels had been made, not born, in the metaphysical plane, and given a true form way back in the Beginning, and demons had been remade, or, more correctly, reshaped, when they fell. Small, dimmed aspects of those forms could always be found on their human corporations, marking them for what they were if one only knew how to look: Aziraphale's halo-bright hair and the constantly shifting sunlight-and-water hues of his irises; the golden, slit-pupiled eyes hidden behind Crowley's ever-present sunglasses. Crowley's birthmarks, although less outwardly obvious, were also of this nature. Upon closer inspection, they revealed themselves to be tiny, individual scales, shiny and smooth, with an almost iridescent gleam, like onyx or obsidian. Sometimes, when he forgot himself, these tiny windows into his true form tended to expand into entire stretches of slick, iridescent snakeskin.

Right now, they had grown into twin patches of dark, glossy, velvety scales in the dips on either side of the base of his spine. They were smooth and dry underneath the flats of Aziraphale's palms, with faint, narrow ridges where they overlapped one another, and just a little bit cooler and more slippery than the flushed, sweat-sheened skin around them. They broadened and grew brighter as they traveled up along the beautiful, long stretch of Crowley's back and down over the pert curve of his buttocks. When he shimmied his hips, they seemed to ripple, refracting light and dark into more colors than the human eye could see.

His ten fingers pressing indentations into skin, into scales, Aziraphale thrust upward just as Crowley bore downward, and they were as far and as deep and as fully, gloriously _one_ as they both could go. Crowley was hot and tight around him, every undulation of his spine and hips sending shockwaves through Aziraphale's cock. He could feel the bony press of Crowley's heels anchoring them together, one against the back of each hip, and his pelvic bones, digging into the tops of Aziraphale's thighs, sharp and exquisite, with every thrust. Crowley's cock was hard and hot and leaking, pressed tight between their bellies. Their mouths were sealed together, the kiss long and drawn out and bruising in its intensity.

_Feathers unfurl one by one like petals out of the nothingness of space, resolving into enormous, sweeping wings, of innumerable dimensions and depth. The arc, the span of them, as wide as the soaring canopies of ancient cloud-forests, as high as the arch of the sky itself, adorned with the jewels of Aziraphale's many eyes._

_And all around them, interleaved within the arches and tunnels of feathers and eyes, twist great, graceful rings of coiled muscle, beginningless and endless, set with scales like stars_.

It felt like there were a thousand feather-tips, a thousand fluttering, silken eyelashes, ghosting across every inch of Crowley's skin, trailing along his spine, flicking at his nipples, bumping up against the sensitive spot inside of him, circling the tip of his cock, drawing everything together to the point of bursting.

Aziraphale snapped his hips up once, twice, three times, plunging hard and fast into the tight, pulsing heat, feeling scales beneath his palms, infinite coils sliding against his back, feathers brushing against the nape of his neck, pressure and power building like a white-hot star deep in his core. He gave one final thrust and cried out as he came, his hair and the golden sclera of his eyes radiating light, just as Crowley clenched convulsively around him, his fingers and heels digging into Aziraphale's shoulders and hips. Crowley uttered a long, drawn-out moan that turned into a gasping, breathless hiss, and stiffened, arching his back and neck in a sinuous, serpentine curve as he came in turn, splattering both of their stomachs and chests.

_A great susurration of trembling feathers, a whirlwind of iridescent black and opalescent gold-limned white. A thousand times a thousand eyes opening up all at once, bluer than any human conception of the color blue and more brilliant than elemental gold. Each one wide open, filled from point to point with light, shivering with ecstasy._

_The serpent's scales reflecting every color of light, every color of dark, vibrating with every note in every key, a hairs-breadth away from shaking into pieces with the intensity of it all._

_In the iris of each eye is the reflection of a single scale; both filled to bursting with light like crystal prisms. A million pairs of eyes and scales, suspended in a sea of feathers and coils, spinning and whirling at dizzying speeds amidst swirling streaks of light and color. And then, in one sudden, brilliant pulse, all of the gathered light explodes outward. It is infinite and ever-expanding, every slivered fragment a different color, beautiful and perfect and deadly sharp, and a moment later the whole spectrum spins back together into one enormous, brilliant sphere of white light, far greater than twice as bright._

_In the aftermath, a profound and deep and perfect silence, and a brightness beyond compare._

_It's not unlike how stars were made, way back in the Beginning._

Afterward, they collapsed against each other, spent and flushed and still over-sensitive, wings flopping softly against their backs. A few feathers danced lazily in the air, the white ones tipped with gold, the black ones with an oil-slick iridescence. Aziraphale's hair was a wild, exuberant mess, the tip of each curl glazed in light. The twin lines of scales had crept all the way up Crowley's back, parting fluidly like water around the bases of his wings and coming back together at the points of his shoulders. They gleamed dark against the gentle flush of his skin, playing with the light in a different, but no less beautiful, way than the black feathers brushing against them.

Aziraphale's wings had manifested themselves too, all three pairs of them, their arches high enough to touch the roof of the car, their wingspans wide enough to bump up against the windows on both sides[7]. Crowley tipped his head back to regard the canopy of feathers spread out above them, which seemed to be pressed into every available nook and cranny inside the Bentley.

"You've got all three pairs of wings out today, angel. And your halo too. That good, eh?"

Aziraphale favored him with an indulgent, post-orgasmic smile and pulled him down into a kiss, languid and unhurried. They remained like this for some time, basking in the afterglow.

Eventually reality set in, as it always did. It took longer than usual for either of them to notice, because the glow, the little zipping, sparkling lights that always accompanied such activities, seemed to be persisting rather than slowly dissipating away. The aftershocks trilling up and down their spines weren't dampening and fading out the way they normally did. Both of them thought that it was just because it had been _that good._

At some point, though, the now-cooled, clammy, sticky mess between them could no longer be ignored, not even by the two most obliviously in love creatures on the planet, so Aziraphale absently snapped it out of existence without a second thought. The action, and its resultant miracle washing gentle and warm across their bodies, had become so familiar in the past months that it was practically muscle memory. Today, however, it felt itchy and electric, close to painful, as it scoured across their bare skin, like a much bigger miracle, with far too much holy energy for its intended purpose.

Crowley rolled over, off of Aziraphale and into the driver's seat, and stared at his stomach. Scales were creeping around his waist, spreading onto his chest and belly from the patches along his back. Ordinarily, they would have been receding by now, shrinking back into the nascent pinpoint spots on either side of his spine, but that was currently not the case at all. Instead, the two stretches of scales had met and were beginning to intercalate smoothly around his navel; they were crimson-tinged, smaller and more delicate than the ones on his back.

There was an electric tingling in his fingers and toes, and a feeling like pressure building from inside and outside simultaneously. His human senses were going haywire, as his original nervous system, the one that was older and more fundamental than the mere concepts of sight and sound and touch, clamored for attention. His skin felt oversensitive, like too much static electricity was playing across it. Atoms shifted, realities warped, dimensions subtly scraped across each other. His ears popped.

There was a second, much louder pop, and suddenly six feet of lanky human corporation became six sinuous feet of black-and-red snake, complete with wings and sunglasses, sprawled out in the driver's seat of the Bentley.

Several of Aziraphale's eyes blinked in surprise. The majority of them, however, were not paying attention. Aziraphale himself had swiveled around in his seat and was craning his neck to peer into the back of the Bentley, a maneuver which was made rather more difficult by the bulk of several pairs of wings that took up most of the available space.

He was looking in confusion at their discarded clothing, strewn across the backseat.

"That's strange. I could have sworn I sent those back to the flat. Although, in my defense, I _was_ quite distracted." He shrugged. "Well, so long as they're here…"

He snapped, and was suddenly fully dressed, right down to the impeccably proper bow tie. This seemed wrong somehow: for all the time he'd been wearing them, Aziraphale had been snippily adamant that one absolutely had to tie a bow tie by hand, or it just wouldn't sit right. A miracle-tied bow tie was nearly as improper as a pre-tied one[8], if you listened to him. 

Crowley was just about to remark on this oddity when he was rudely interrupted by his own trousers smacking him in the face. He made an aggrieved noise, just as Aziraphale uttered his own matching exclamation of consternation, and managed to slither with some difficulty out of the tangled mass of black denim[9], ignoring the clunking sound of something heavy falling from the pile of fabric into the footwell beneath the seat.

"What the Heaven was that for, angel?"

Aziraphale was looking at his hand, the thumb and forefinger still held together at the tail end of a snap, with a frown.

"I'm… not sure what just happened, actually. I was about to ask you if you wanted your clothing as well, and then the next thing I knew, there they were. Your trousers."

"In case you hadn't noticed, I've no need of trousers at the moment," said Crowley peevishly, punctuating the words with a shimmy of his serpentine body.

"I noticed. Is there any particular reason _why_ you're a snake right now?"

"Wasn't on purpose," mumbled Crowley. The scales on either side of his head, right below his still-present sunglasses, grew subtly redder.

This was not the only time in recent memory that Crowley had involuntarily turned into a snake. There'd been one particular night, not long after they'd gotten together for the first time, when Aziraphale had managed to make him come three times in rapid succession after a prolonged, exquisitely torturous build-up, and it had been rather immensely (and wonderfully) overwhelming. _Anyone_ would have turned into a snake after that, had they the ability; not having to negotiate limbs was an unexpected benefit.

Still, that had been a transcendent experience, and it had since been repeated many more times, and he hadn't spontaneously turned into a snake again. Today's adventure in the Bentley, novelty factor notwithstanding, had been good, had been _amazing_ even, but was it really more earth-shattering than the revelation that was three long-awaited orgasms in a row?

Two more eyes blinked open from within the arches of wings above Aziraphale's head. They stared, solemn and unblinking, at Crowley. It was unnerving. The pupils were very still, but the golden sclera looked like they were shimmering. Come to think of it, _everything_ inside the Bentley – Aziraphale's wings and eyes, the dashboard and the steering wheel and the seats, even the sunglasses perched in their typical gravity-defying manner on the tip of Crowley's serpentine nose – seemed to be vibrating at some supersonic frequency.

"Can you put those away, angel? It's… well, it's really intense. And a little creepy, to be honest. Sexy. But creepy."

"I'm _trying_. I don't think I _can_." There was a high, nervous note in Aziraphale's voice that was doing absolutely nothing for Crowley's state of mind.

"Miracle?"

"I suppose it couldn't hurt to try."

Aziraphale snapped his fingers. Unlike his earlier pair of overpowered miracles, nothing happened, except for another eye materializing, peeking out from between two feathers somewhere above his left shoulder. Its eyelashes fluttered anxiously. Crowley could practically _see_ the worried frown lines that would have been around it, were it situated between a forehead and cheeks.

A creeping sort of nervous anxiety was growing steadily in the pit of Crowley's stomach and building in the clench of his jaw. Something was wrong. His serpent form had been meant to co-exist with, was in some ways made out of, occult power. It had been created, way back in the beginning, to make stars, to spin galaxies out of raw power; the outer shape of it had been changed by his Fall, but at heart it was still the same. This skin didn't feel tight and itchy in the charged atmosphere the way his human corporation had, but because it was so highly attuned to the currents of metaphysical power, he was suddenly, acutely, aware of just _how much_ of it there was in this small, confined space. There was nothing now to dull the vibrations that thrummed and reverberated along the edges of every one of his scales.

He was struck with the overwhelming instinct to slither away and hide, to make himself small and coil up in some dark, secret place. He tried to fight it, but the atmosphere inside the car was making it extremely difficult. He became more diminutive, shrinking down to less than half his previous size, although he did successfully and with much difficulty resist the urge to slink into the tight, protected space underneath the seat.

It wouldn't have mattered anyway, instincts be damned. There was nowhere inside the car to hide, nowhere that wasn't suffused with the strobing currents of power, nowhere that wasn't trembling and shaking with it.

Aziraphale, meanwhile, seemed to have independently come to the same conclusion. All of those supernumerary eyes could surely detect the swirling currents of power in much the same way that Crowley's serpentine senses could. Something was wrong. The part of him that was a Principality, that had been made to be a guardian, immediately and instinctively reared up to protect the thing he loved most. His gut response was not to shrink and hide, but to make himself larger, to preen and posture, to mantle his wings, all three pairs of them, fluffing the feathers and taking up all the available space in the confines of the Bentley. He would stand his ground and bare his (metaphorical) teeth and glare with every single one of his (very literal, very numerous) eyes. He too couldn't fight his nature, not with the massive excess of metaphysical power floating around unfettered. If he'd still been in possession of his flaming sword, it would undoubtedly have made an appearance.

The other part of him, the part that was purely Aziraphale, wrung his hands and frowned and said "Oh _dear_ " in a fretful voice.

Crowley couldn't say he disagreed. _Oh_ _dear_ indeed.

He could _see_ the power when he shifted his vision half out of focus, half out of earthly reality, could see the shimmering wavefronts bouncing and scattering off the windows and walls and roof of the Bentley, bending back in on themselves like they were laser beams and the entire interior of the car was built of mirrors. That wasn't right – the energy should trace a straight path through space, getting weaker and weaker until it had dissipated entirely into the atmosphere. There was no material on Earth, neither glass nor metal nor mirrors for that matter, that should be able to stop it, much less reflect it back on itself like a perpetual, undiminishing echo. And yet, somehow, the afterimage of every miracle they'd performed, occult and celestial both, since the moment they'd shut the door, to say nothing of the afterglow from their coupling, was still here, trapped inside the Bentley.

Along with both of them.

* * *

[1]Admittedly, Crowley had never tinted the Bentley's windows for this particular purpose. However, sometimes he did it just while driving around, because having tinted windows seemed cool and dangerous, and very James Bond-esque.return to text

[2]Just a little though. The whole point of doing it in the Bentley was that it was a car, not a luxury suite. It was supposed to be cramped and tight and just the tiniest bit uncomfortable; there wasn't room to do anything but squeeze together as tightly and as closely as two beings possibly could.return to text

[3]Not that she would have been. She, unlike some others who shall remain nameless, had a well-developed sense of self-preservation and functional brain cells.return to text

[4]Mind you, they had also been enthusiastically engaging in the _extremely_ forbidden by shagging each other silly for several months now, and it had not lost even one bit of its considerable appeal.return to text

[5]Crowley himself had only accomplished this feat a handful of times, mostly when he was feeling in a self-flagellating mood.return to text

[6]Well, Aziraphale's shoes anyway.return to text

[7]A pedestrian who happened to be passing by a few minutes earlier had done a double take when she saw what appeared to be a flurry of white feathers and bright, strobing multicolored lights behind the tinted windows of a very nice vintage Bentley parked at the curb outside that one bookshop that never seemed to be open. Her first thought was that it was some sort of tiny, bizarre nightclub for swans; this moment of whimsy was rapidly forgotten in favor of sheer, blinding envy that the owner of the Bentley had gotten what was frankly an unbelievably good parking spot in central London. Some people had all the luck.return to text

[8]Of course Crowley owned several pre-tied bow ties, for the express purpose of annoying Aziraphale. It wasn't as if he found the novelty prints (rubber ducks; two snakes coiled together into a heart shape; a cartoon car that looked suspiciously like the Bentley) cute or anything. No, _absolutely, positively_ not. return to text

[9]Apparently his jeans were just as difficult to get out of even when he didn't have legs.return to text


	2. Chapter 2

The power trapped inside the Bentley wasn't nearly at the level that one could make stars of it, which was a relief, but it was still far more than should ever exist in any one very small, very confined place on Earth.

"Could we _use_ it up, do you think? Burn it up with frivolous miracles, if you will."

"Worth a try, I guess."

They both fell silent for a moment, as they concentrated on trying to harness the stray currents of energy swirling around them. It was an odd sensation, trying to pull power _to_ oneself from without rather than drawing it out from within. The energy was slippery and nearly impossible to get a purchase on, even for Aziraphale, who had more experience than most in holding on tight to slithery, squirmy things. And, unlike wrestling with serpents, this endeavor seemed unlikely to result in a conclusion that gave quite the same level of satisfaction. Even when he did finally manage to catch hold of one of the elusive strands, it merely fizzed and popped like so much static electricity when he tried to shape it into a platter of crepes.

"I don't think this is working, dear."

"Not for me either. It feels like it's no longer _mine_. Or yours, for that matter. I know what your miracles feel like, and this isn't it. My guess is it's a bit like how you can't just suck the power back out of a star after you've made it. No returns or refunds, is what they used to say in the Celestial Spheres Department, back in the day."

"All right, so we won't be able to burn it up. What would happen if we just opened the door and let it out?"

"With this amount of power? It'll level half the block, if we're lucky. Most of Soho if we're not."

"Oh."

Both of them turned to look out the driver's side window, where the entrance to the bookshop was visible a mere ten feet away, well within Crowley's best-case-scenario radius of half a block.

"And then there's all the people inside those buildings. We might be able to prevent them from getting crushed if we both put all the miracle we've got left into it, but with the sheer amount of energy… they'll either be the luckiest bastards alive or cursed to kingdom come. Maybe both at the same time. Win the lottery one minute, get killed by a goose falling out of the sky the next."

"There _must_ be another way, one that doesn't involve adding more miracles to the mix. _Think_ , Crowley."

" _You_ think."

"I'm _trying_. It would be less of a trial if you didn't insist on sticking your tongue out at me."

"You're _ssstaring_ at me. It's making me nervousss. Can't help the tongue thing."

"Crowley, I have a _thousand eyes_ right now. At any given time, at least a hundred of them are going to be looking in your general direction. I can't help that _either_."

"Well, can't you _close_ them?"

" _All_ of them? At _once_? I'm afraid that's impossible. Angels are ever-vigilant. When one eye closes, another one opens."

"Ugh. Of course they do. _Imagine_ the _horrors_ if good ever took a fucking break every once in a blue moon."

Aziraphale swallowed down the urge to snipe back with an equal or greater degree of sarcasm. There was a certain enjoyment to it, to be sure, but also a great deal of frustration, and it was getting them nowhere.

"I'm not staring at you, love, I promise. I'm just worried. I wish we were in the shop right now. I'm sure there must be a book…"

Crowley personally thought that it was highly doubtful that an answer to their very inhuman problem was to be found in any book written by a human. In a flash of clarity, he realized that perhaps it was not the slim possibility of a solution that had Aziraphale missing his books so terribly, but rather the act, or possibly the ritual, of it: the donning of the white gloves, the turning of pages, the running of a finger down a column of text, the careful taking of notes, the escape into a compelling narrative. Instead, with nothing productive to channel all the nerves and apprehension into, Aziraphale's hands fluttered fretfully and compulsively in his lap as though rifling through the pages of an invisible book. It was much the same reason why Crowley himself kept flicking his tongue out, an instinctual, ingrained nervous reaction.

Crowley wanted nothing more than to be able to catch ahold of those jittery hands and still their motion by pressing them between his own, a promise that they'd figure all this out, together. In his current form, he had to settle for bumping the top of his head up against Aziraphale's palm, but the contact seemed to help. The act of nuzzling up into Aziraphale's hand, and the slow stroke of that hand against his scales in response, tamped down some of the fear and nervous energy, at least for the moment, and helped them think.

"Maybe we need to figure out _why_ this happened before we can solve it. Something's changed. I remember when I was trying to get to Tadfield I had to keep feeding occult power into the Bentley just to hold it together. I put _everything_ I had into it, and in the end it wasn't even enough. That power was running out faster than I could put it in."

"Tadfield… Oh! That must be it! Crowley, this car _isn't_ the one you used to have. Oh, I know, it's identical in almost every way. But that one burned up there on the airstrip, and Adam—"

"Oh, _fuck_ ," said Crowley, having come to the same distressing conclusion. " _Adam can warp reality_ however he bloody well likes. What the fuck did the kid do to my car?!?"

"Well, perhaps he can warp it back just as easily. We should call him. Where's that ePhone you're always tapping away at?"

" _iPhone_ , angel. And 's where it always is, in the front pocket of my trousers[10]," Crowley said.

"And your trousers are…?" asked Aziraphale, raising an eyebrow in the direction of Crowley's lower half, which was decidedly not sporting trousers of any sort at the moment[11].

"I seem to recall _you_ flinging them at my head earlier."

"Unintentionally!"

Without thinking, Crowley snapped his fingers[12] to summon his phone, just as he'd always done when he'd misplaced it. A split second later, it shot straight up at alarming speed out of the footwell beneath his seat, and would have hit him square in the head had he not dived to the side at the last minute, saved by his serpentine reflexes. It struck one of Aziraphale's many wings instead, with a soft, feathery thump.

"Oh. Well, fuck. Guess it was closer than I thought[13]. Sorry, angel."

"I think it might be best if we avoid performing any more miracles, given that we don't know how much more the Bentley can hold," said Aziraphale, indicating the path Crowley's mobile had taken, which was currently delineated by a wavering, shimmery gold haze. At the end of this trajectory, a little, effervescent tendril of miracle power detached itself from his wing and arced upward to join one of the larger currents swirling around their heads.

"This baby can hold so much more miracle, I'm sure of it," said Crowley. The attempt at bravado sounded shaky and hollow even to him, and the corresponding slap of his tail against the dashboard disappointingly weak.

"Perhaps, but let's not tempt fate, shall we, dear?"

"Yeah, okay, fine."

Crowley's desperate swerve to avoid being beaned in the forehead by a rectangle of glass and metal larger than his head (at present) had landed him square in Aziraphale's lap. (This was entirely an accident. _Entirely._ ) It was plush and expansive and smelled like a delightful combination of bookshop and sex and angel. He slithered up closer, wedging a coil into the tight space between two particularly squashy rolls of fat at Aziraphale's waist.

"Could just stay here. 'S warm. And, mmmphfff, soft."

Aziraphale trailed one hand absently down the scales along Crowley's spine while bending over to retrieve the fallen mobile with the other. He poked tentatively at the screen with his index finger and frowned.

"Crowley, dear, loathe though I am to disturb you, I need you to come up here for a moment. It says you need to unlock this with your—your face? Is that correct? I've no idea what that means. I hope it's not something that requires a miracle."

"Nah, not a miracle. Just technology."

With some reluctance, Crowley disentangled himself from around Aziraphale's waist and sat up[14]. He turned his face toward the screen and glared at it. Nothing happened. He moved in closer, so close that his nose bumped up against the glass. Still nothing.

He bobbed his head from side to side, and Aziraphale, well versed in the nonverbal language of Crowley, reached out to pluck the sunglasses from his head. He turned his visage this way and that, even going so far as to present his less flattering side[15] for the camera's inspection. Still, for all his maneuvering, the facial recognition software adamantly refused to acknowledge his face.

"Oh come _onnnnnnn,_ you blasssted thing! Let me in!"

"Perhaps it doesn't recognize your, ah, more serpentine aspect?"

"It'll recognize me if it knows what's good for it!" insisted Crowley, making a truly terrible face and hissing at the phone, which calmly told him to please try again.

"I don't think it's working, dear."

"Oh, _fuck_ ," said Crowley, sinking a fang into his own lip to prevent a miracle-laced invective from bursting out. He'd once gotten a commendation for facial recognition software that refused to recognize you if you'd gotten a new haircut or were wearing sunglasses. But that was a problem for the humans, since _his_ phone knew better than to refuse him entry, whatever his eyewear/hairstyle/snake-or-human-face situation. Or so he'd thought. Apparently the Fear of Crowley ran on occult power too[16].

Eventually the phone seemed to reach the end of its prodigious patience and prompted him to enter his passcode instead. Crowley had selected a passcode when he'd acquired the device, mostly because it had forced him to, but had never had to use it; frankly, he'd forgotten that the option even existed. After directing Aziraphale to try _6666_ and _6969_ to no effect, they struck gold with _4004_.

"Shoulda known that's what it was, it's the same as the code to the safe in my office. Nice and simple. Complicated passwords with arbitrary requirements that no one can remember are one of mine, you know."

"Crowley, even I know that it's unwise to use the same passcode for important things."

"Well how _else_ am I supposed to remember, angel? I've got no head for numbers."

"Yes, I know," said Aziraphale, rolling approximately forty-five of his countless eyes, "I've seen the way you do your taxes. But never mind that, let's get on with calling Adam, then."

"It's probably easiest to use Siri. I don't think she likes snakes[17], so it's probably best if you do the talking. Just press that button on the side there and hold it down for a second. Yeah, there you go."

"Ah, hello, dear. How do you do," said Aziraphale tentatively. "Could you please call, erm, Adam, if you would be so kind?"

"Calling Madame Tracy," announced Siri's disembodied voice.

"Oh, no no _no_ , _not_ Madame Tracy. _Adam_. _Adam Young_." Aziraphale's flustered protests and desperate jabs at the screen were useless; it was too late and the call to Tracy had already gone through.

"Looks like Siri doesn't like you any more than she likes me, angel," said Crowley, somewhat smugly. He was about to rub it in some more, when they were interrupted by Madame Tracy's face appearing on the screen. Apparently Aziraphale had managed, with his fumbling, to turn the call into a video call.

"Hello? Mister Crowley? Are you there? I can't see anything except… oh, I say! Is that the inside of your car? It's rather more sparkly than I would have expected. And are those feathers?"

Crowley hissed in frustration and slithered over so that he could see the screen.

"Sssssorry, didn't mean to call—" he began, but was drowned out by an ear-splitting squeal emanating from the phone's speakers. It was the sound of pure, unmitigated delight familiar to pet owners and animal lovers everywhere, and it made Crowley want to shrink up and die.

"Oooooooh, Mister Crowley! Is that you? I don't think I've ever seen you in your snake form. I'd imagined you would be quite a lot bigger, to be honest. But ohhhhh, aren't you just _absolutely darling_?! I could just eat you up!"

Crowley's eyes bulged. He bared his fangs and hissed and affected the most fearsome demeanor he could muster without resorting to a miracle.

On the other end of the call, Tracy, utterly unfazed, continued making kissy faces and exclaiming about how _precious_ he was.

Crowley, on the other hand, was becoming more and more distressed. Cursing his lack of fingers, he stuck out his tongue and swiped frantically at the screen to end the call. The moment he touched the glass, he felt an electric shock followed by an intense sucking sensation, like something was trying to pull his tongue right out of his head and down into the phone lines. Luckily, the call ended, cutting Tracy off mid-coo, before his tongue had stretched more than a few inches. The recoil caused his head to pop up sharply and his whole body to fly backward into Aziraphale's chest.

"Are you all right, darling?"

"That _hurt_ ," he said, smarting in more ways than one, "and 'm not _cute_."

Crowley waggled his tongue, which still felt far too much like a stretched-out rubber band for comfort, back and forth in an attempt to make it fit back into his mouth. Several stray, glittery bits of miracle dislodged themselves in the process and went back to bouncing enthusiastically around the inside of the car.

"There, there," said Aziraphale soothingly, running a hand over the scales on top of his head. "You're terribly fearsome, I'm sure."

"Darn right I am."

"Although she's not wrong, you know. You _are_ rather adorable at your current size."

Crowley hissed at Aziraphale, but it was halfhearted. It was hard to be upset about being called adorable when it was _Aziraphale_ doing it[18].

"I suppose you just want to _eat me up_ too then," he grumbled.

"In a manner of speaking, yes. The idea does have its merits," said Aziraphale, giving him a sidelong look.

Crowley hissed, more in anticipation than in frustration this time, and attempted to waggle his eyebrows suggestively. Given that he had no eyebrows at the moment, he only succeeded in bobbling his head up and down, which caused his sunglasses to bounce on his snout. This was _also_ exceedingly cute, although Aziraphale managed, with great difficulty, to prevent himself from saying so out loud.

" _Focus_ , Crowley. The sooner we get out of here and get rid of this excess power, the sooner we can get back to more… pleasant pursuits."

" _Fine_. You're no fun."

They managed, this time around, to actually call Adam. When he answered the video call, he did not comment on the size or shape of Crowley's current form, and indeed seemed unfazed by both it and Aziraphale's terrifying mass of wings and eyes[19]. This earned him ten points immediately in Crowley's book[20].

"Hey, kid," said Crowley.

"Hi, Mr. C. Hi, Aziraphale."

"Hello, Adam," said Aziraphale. "We were wondering if you might perhaps know something about Crowley's vehicle behaving strangely, specifically vis-à-vis the retention of ethereal and occult power."

"What he means is," cut in Crowley, "did you turn my car into a miracle bomb on four wheels when you brought it back? And more importantly, _why?_ "

"I wouldn't make a bomb! Pepper would _kill_ me. World peace and all. We don't do bombs."

"Well, what _did_ you do to it then? Because it's got enough miracle power stuck in it right now to explode, and then some."

"It was meant to protect you. Y'know, just in case your old bosses came looking for you, you could hide out in the car. Both of you. And they wouldn't be able to get in. Like that one guy, the one that smelled like poo, you know how he just popped up inside your car when you were on your way to Tadfield? I made it so that couldn't happen again. Have you ever seen a Faraday cage? They're super cool, we learned about them in school. You can stand inside one in the middle of a lightning storm and the shocks can't touch you. They just kind of bounce off of it. So, I made your car sorta like that, only for occult powers, and ether- whatever angels call it. 'S the same, really, I dunno why you all insist on calling them different things when they're the same thing."

"That's quite clever, actually," said Aziraphale.

"So it worked? _Cool!_ "

"I think it worked too well, kid," said Crowley. "It's keeping all _our_ power _in_ , too."

"I guess Faraday cages could work both ways. Makes sense," said Adam sagely, with all the self-assurance of an eleven year old who has learned one cool thing and now thinks he is the world's expert on the subject. "Why's there so much power in the car right now in the first place? A few little miracles shouldn't be giving you a problem."

"Ggggggnnng… birds… bees… nope. No. No way. Ask your mum and dad, kid."

Adam shrugged. "Oh. Grown up things. Like taxes. _Boring._ "

" _Terribly_ boring. We shan't bore you with the details," said Aziraphale, then changed the subject for good measure. "You didn't happen to do this to anything else you restored, did you? Say, my bookshop?"

"Nope. I thought about it, but I couldn't figure out how it would work 'cause it's not a closed system. Customers coming in and out all the time."

"Not if I can help it," muttered Aziraphale, shuddering at the very idea.

"And there was too much stuff in there, energy sources of their own. Those Jeffrey whoever books. Some weird thing in Aziraphale's desk. The summoning circle under the rug. The big book of demonology in the back room."

"Well, that's a relief. I suspected as much, because we've, shall we say, _tested it out_ quite extensively, if unknowingly, already, but it's always good to know for certain."

"That's great," broke in Crowley, "but it doesn't fix our problem right now. Adam, can't you just reverse whatever it is you did?"

"Nope," said Adam cheerfully, "Can't do that sorta thing anymore, I don't think. 'Sides, I promised Pepper and Wensley and Brian I wouldn't, and 's not sporting to break a promise to your friends."

"But there _has_ to be a way to get all this power out without causing an explosion."

"Listen, Mr. C. I'm just a kid. You can't expect me to have it all figured out yet. But it's all physics, right? And physics is cool but it's also a lot of… ugh… _maths_. Why would you do maths when you can read adventure stories? When you can _have_ adventures? Maths are for grown-ups. I think you really need to talk to an adult."

"An adult?" parroted Crowley, dumbfounded.

"You're old, right? So you should know other old people, and some of them'll know maths and physics, I'm sure. Oops, sorry, I gotta go. Mum's calling me for dinner. You don't know how she gets when I don't show up at the table the minute she calls. Bye!"

"Wait! Adam!"

It was too late. Adam had hung up.

"Maths?" asked Crowley, still bewildered. "Why would we know anyone who knows maths or physics?"

"I might know one or two people Upstairs that might be able to help with _meta_ physics, perhaps," said Aziraphale dubiously, "although I doubt they'll be too happy to hear from me."

"This Fahrenheit-whatever cage thingie, though. That's Earthly physics, not metaphysics."

"But _we_ – and this energy – are metaphysical."

"So you're saying we need to find someone who understands _both_? Fuck."

"We must know _someone_."

"Hellspawn! He was good at maths. Regrettably so. Remember?"

"Didn't we just call the Hellspawn?"

"Not _that_ Hellspawn. The original—err, the first one. Who wasn't actually spawned in Hell. Warlock."

"Warlock? Crowley, he's a _child_. And just how do you propose to explain… _all this_ … to him?"

"Err… would you be a dear and help Nanny out of a wee spot of trouble? Pay no attention to the terrifying angel behind the curtain?"

"I know we've talked about coming clean to him, and I do think he deserves to know the truth, but this is possibly the _absolute worst_ way to go about doing so."

"Yeah, you're probably right. Kid doesn't know physics anyway, unless repeatedly throwing his toys off the balcony when he was five qualifies. And Adam did say we needed an adult."

"Preferably one with some familiarity with our natures. Given that we seem to be unable to hide our true forms at the moment."

"You mean, someone who won't run away screaming when they see all your eyes. Or my terrifying fangs."

(Crowley, who in his current form had one tiny, snaggletooth fang sticking up from his bottom lip, was more adorable than terrifying, but Aziraphale wisely kept his mouth shut.)

"So, we need an adult, who knows physics and maths. And maybe metaphysics. And is familiar with the nature of angels and demons. Oh, and who doesn't want to kill one or the other of us, which eliminates virtually all of our former coworkers. Not that I'd even know how to get a message Upstairs right now without resorting to a miracle. I don't know, Crowley, that seems like quite a tall order."

"An Agnes Nutter prophecy would be real nice right about now," muttered Crowley, casting his eyes upward, as if expecting another scrap of Agnes' wisdom to simply drop out of the sky[21]. But lightning didn't strike twice, and no prophecy appeared.

Instead, however, several of Aziraphale's eyes popped wide, and the irises grew impossibly bluer, the little golden flecks in them spinning dizzily, as he had a eureka moment[22]. He sucked in a sharp breath, and his feathers trembled with excitement and relief.

"That's it! Not Agnes, but her descendant! Anathema fits _all_ the criteria. I'm almost certain she even has a doctorate in some sort of physics. You _do_ have her number, don't you?"

"Yeah, she made me put it in my phone. Just in case we _found her property again_ and would _perhaps like to return it this time_. Guess she didn't think she'd have any luck getting _you_ to return her bloody book if you got your hands on it again."

"She knows how to reach me. The bookshop has a perfectly functional telephone. Well, go on and call her then."

Anathema, thankfully, answered her phone on the second ring.

"Hey, book girl. We need your help."

" _Crowley_. Don't be rude. Hello, Anathema dear. I apologize for my… for Crowley. What he meant to say is, hello, how are you, could we perhaps trouble you for some assistance? We find ourselves in rather a delicate situation, and Adam suggested that we consult with someone who was familiar with physics and mathematics. I seem to recall that you hold a doctorate in some field of physics."

"Two, actually. Applied Physics and History of Science. What can I help you with, Aziraphale?"

"Would you perhaps know anything about something called a Faraday cage and how to safely get out of one when the power is trapped inside with you? Without causing any explosions, if you please."

"And the power's metaphysical, if that makes any difference," added Crowley.

"All right. I think the theory is the same whether you're dealing with electromagnetic or metaphysical energy. You'll need to ground it, or absorb it somehow. Safely grounding metaphysical power isn't quite as simple as grounding a standard electrical current, but I think you could do it by redirecting it into a ley line. Unless there's one directly beneath you though, you'll probably get quite a bit of collateral damage to anything between you and it."

Aziraphale sighed. "There are no ley lines near the shop. That was one of the reasons I chose that particular location. I didn't like to draw too much attention. I believe the closest is the one that follows the path of the Thames through the city."

"That's not far from your shop. It looks like you're in Crowley's car, right? And I'm assuming that's what's serving as the Faraday cage as well. You could just drive it to the river. If you get as close as you can and open the door, I think the power should be attracted to the ley line and not much of it will escape to cause chaos."

"No can do, book girl," interjected Crowley. "Can't drive this baby anywhere without a miracle."

"Wait, are you saying you _don't actually know how to drive your car_?"

Crowley made an indignant sputtering sound. "No! Thasss not what I'm saying! Of course I can drive!"

"I'm certain you can, dear," said Aziraphale in a placating tone, although privately he thought that Crowley's level of indignation indicated that there might be a decent chance that he actually _couldn't_. "Though I do believe it is necessary to have hands and feet to operate a vehicle."

"Well, I can see that _you_ still have hands and I presume you also have feet, Aziraphale," said Anathema, ever practical, "so why don't you drive?"

In response this positively outrageous suggestion, Crowley twisted his body possessively around the steering wheel in a rather fanciful, curvy facsimile of an anti-theft device and glared balefully at both Aziraphale and the phone.

" _No_. Absssolutely not."

"I'm afraid I've never learnt to drive. I've never had need to, I must admit."

"No petrol!" declared Crowley triumphantly. "There! So nobody can drive her without a miracle. End of story. Any other ideas?"

"Well, if you can't take it to a ley line, then you'll need to find some other way to absorb the energy. The trouble is that I can't think of anything besides a ley line that could absorb that much metaphysical power without itself exploding… oh, hang on just a second, guys… what's that, Newt?"

Most of the conversation between Anathema and Newt was too faint to be overheard, although a few of Anathema's words were loud enough to come through the line quite clearly: "too dangerous," "you could be seriously hurt," "can't stop you if you really insist." This last was spoken in a rather resigned tone of voice which seemed to suggest that, whatever argument they'd been having, she'd lost.

"Ah, sorry about that. Newt thinks he might have a solution for your problem. _I_ think it's a bit reckless, but he insists on trying, and it _is_ better than anything I've managed to come up with so far. Here, I'll let him explain."

"Err, hi, Mr. Fell, Mr. Crowley. It's been a while. Hope you've both been well," said Newt, polite and a little nervous as always. "Although I hear you're in a bit of a bind at the moment."

"Indeed we are, and a rather distressing one at that," said Aziraphale. "Anathema says that you've proposed a solution?"

"I have. The solution is… me."

" _You?_ " asked Crowley incredulously, just as Aziraphale said, much more diplomatically, "I'm sorry, I afraid I don't follow."

"Okay, look, I know this is going to sound weird… or maybe not, I don't know, _weird_ is a relative term, as I've learned in the last year. Anyway. Right." He cleared his throat, then continued. "So I've been tagging along sometimes when Anathema goes out to map the ley lines, you know? And apparently they always act funny when I'm around. Kind of … muted, or dampened. It's like I'm a black hole for that kind of energy, the same way I suck up all the energy that powers modern technology. The closer I am, the stronger the effect."

"Oh, I think I see. So if you get close enough, you might be able to absorb the energy burst from the Bentley before it gets out of hand."

"Exactly. Anathema thinks it's too dangerous, but, well, I have a good feeling about this, and I want to help. I trust the two of you and Anathema; I know you'll step in if things get too hairy."

"Of course we will."

"And you've gotta take some risks sometimes. That's just the way life goes."

"Newt is right, of course," said Anathema, who'd come back on the line. "It's his choice and, if we're being honest, I envy his confidence. I'm still learning about taking risks and trusting my gut. It's strange not to have Agnes to turn to in situations like this. Scary, but in a good way. A brave new world."

"I know the feeling, my dear. It's frightening, but so very worth it, in the end. And it helps a great deal if you have a partner who is willing to take risks sometimes. Why, the whole friendship between myself and Crowley started because he slithered up to me on the walls of Eden, bold as anything. Just imagine, a demon approaching an angel to chat about the weather, not knowing if I'd smite him or not…"

"Can we save the philosophizing for later?" broke in Crowley, a bit impatiently, "Say, for _after_ we've gotten out of this car?"

"Oh, right. I'm sorry, darling. You know how I tend to get carried away, and I do so love to tell the story of how you and I met." Aziraphale paused, then said to Anathema and Newt, "As long as you're both sure, we'd be most grateful for your assistance."

"I'm sure. We're both sure. Sit tight. We'll be there as soon as we can."

* * *

[10]Crowley, of course, had the newest, most ostentatious, biggest model of iPhone with all the bells and whistles and then some. There was no way, given the constraints of physical space, that it could conceivably fit into the uselessly tiny pockets of his trousers. But it _did_ fit, because he expected it to; moreso, it did so without producing any unsightly bumps and bulges. Back in the days when he was still keeping track of his Sin Quota, he'd inspired a great deal of Envy and the occasional bonus flareup of Wrath in bystanders who'd seen him produce that phone out of a seemingly flat pocket that looked like you could barely fit two fingers into it on a good day.return to text

[11]To be fair, it was also entirely snake, which made trousers a difficult proposition.return to text

[12]Metaphorically, because he was a snake at present, with no fingers to speak of. This took the form of a sort of strange bobbing of his head, which was, although he would never admit it, rather adorable.return to text

[13]Isn't it always the case that you spend ten minutes looking for your phone, only to finally find it a mere five feet away from where you started?return to text

[14]Inasmuch as a snake – or, truthfully, Crowley in his human form as well – could be said to sit up. He held the upper third of his body in a more or less vertical position, in any case.return to text

[15]Only _very slightly_ less flattering, mind you. One of the scales on the right side of his snout was just the teeniest bit wonky, and it looked a little funny sometimes when the light hit it a certain way. Aziraphale swore up and down that he couldn't spot the imperfection, but Crowley knew it was there.return to text

[16]If his plants ever got wind of this…return to text

[17]This wasn't true. Siri had no opinion one way or another about snakes. She was, however, very irritated by demons who didn't seem to know how to use vowels or syllables when making words; they made her job so much harder.return to text

[18]In much the same way that he was allergic to being cuddled by anyone except Aziraphale. He was a demon after all, so it was okay and even commendable to be a hypocrite sometimes.return to text

[19]This was actually because he'd already seen it, back at the airbase. He'd seen _everyone's_ true forms in his moment of ultimate power. That included Gabriel's and Beelzebub's, both of which were far more surprising and unexpected than Crowley's. It was good insurance, should either of them try to start Armageddon again at some point in the future.return to text

[20] _Was supposed to start apocalypse, decided he didn't feel like it after all_ had gotten him a whopping twenty points. Was it a linear scale? Crowley wasn't telling. (Truthfully he had no idea; maths were mystifying to him at the best of times.)return to text

[21]Or, well, out of the roof of the Bentley, which was currently sparkly enough to masquerade as a starry night sky, if you squinted and used a bit of imagination.return to text

[22]Crowley found himself slightly turned on, despite the situation (or perhaps because of it; he hadn't forgotten how they'd gotten into said situation to begin with, after all). Whether or not Aziraphale know that his eureka moment face was similar to his orgasmic one remained an open question; the jury was still out on the _really good crème brulee_ moan, and he didn't expect that Aziraphale, bastard as he was, would be any more forthcoming on this one.return to text

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any errors in the physics are entirely mine... although let's just say that Adam's understanding of physics might be a little questionable as well, but who's going to argue with the Antichrist?
> 
> You might have noticed that this has grown into three chapters... as always, I remain incapable of being able to predict how many words it'll take me to tell a story. ;)

**Author's Note:**

> You can find Disgustiphage on [tumblr](https://disgustiphage.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/disgustiphage), and Nightbloomingcereus on [tumblr](https://moondawntreader.tumblr.com).
> 
> And [here is a link to the tumblr post with the art](https://disgustiphage.tumblr.com/post/641856616911749120/heres-my-art-for-the-do-it-with-style-events) if you'd like to reblog it.


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